With their fancy sunglasses and blackout curtains, Australia isn’t the only swimming nation to bring timezone effect-combating gear to the 2016 Olympic Games.
The Olympic finals are scheduled to begin at 10pm local time each night, rendering the average bedtime for competitors into the 2am to 3am range. To help the U.S. athletes adapt and thrive in this environment, the team has developed a new protocol dubbed “LNATP: Late Night at the Pool”.
Per the list of items outlined by Team USA’s Managing Director Lindsay Mintenko, all American swimmers will be given eye masks and earplugs, with instructions to begin practicing sleeping with the instruments now so they are appropriately acclimated once in the Rio athlete village. The swimmers will also be issued blackout curtains to create a dark sleeping environment, but have been instructed to bring a pillow from home for familiarity. (WSJ)
“If our athletes don’t sleep, they’re not going to perform,” says Mintenko. “A lot more emphasis has been put on that part of it because of the schedule.”
Additionally, swimmers such as Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky who are swimming multiple events will have late-night meals delivered to them at the pool to enable immediate refuel while waiting for post-race drug testing.
As for the American open water swimmers, they will move into hotel rooms the night prior to their morning races to ensure on-time arrival on race day. According to Bryce Elser, Team USA’s Open Water Program Director, that preparation step will cut commute times down from two hours to just a few minutes for the open water swimmers.
So let me get his straight. NBC pays billions for the TV rights to the Olympics. They bid a contract larger than any other network, and are one of the largest sponsors of the games if not the biggest. Tv coverage is what keeps Olympic sports even somewhat relevant to the common man. NBC will not want to bid billions if nobody watches. The schedule is altered so that NBC can show better and live coverage of Swimming and all of the Olympics for better ratings. Swimming and the other sports benefit from better coverage and better ratings with more exposure.
Yeah how dare you evil NBC. Changing the start times to improve exposure.
That the swimmers are having to adapt to a TV schedule is kind of ludicrous.
Throwing off your circadian rhythm like that can make it easier to get sick. Get sick and there goes your dream of your best possible performance.
The Olympics are supposed to be for the youth of the world to come together for a competition.
Not a form of “reality TV” to fit what works for advertisers and TV networks.
Since you seem to be an expert on sleep and Circadian Rhythms, I’m sure you’re aware of a 1983 study performed by Dr. Thomas Reilly in the UK that showed peak time for aerobic power in swimming is around 10 PM, precisely the time finals start in Rio. The results were later corroborated in a study of rowers, who exhibited lowest levels of lactic acid production in the blood between 8:30 and 10:30 PM. Perhaps all this fuss will be about nothing, if previously tested science holds true.
Guess that sucks for anyone that competes under a 400 because all those events are predominantly anaerobic based
It’s always 10pm somewhere. I think there is a song about it.
Oh, NBC. Sounds like the athletes are way more adaptable and less grumpy about this than I would be.